Workout of the Day

Dec 07

What About When Meditation Doesn't Work?

It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.

Meditation is pretty unanimously agreed upon to be beneficial for stress relief, focus, relaxation, happiness -- the works -- right? But here’s the thing: you can still come out of a 30 minute meditation more stressed, pissed off, distracted, and unhappy than when you started. Enter a meditation full of resentment or lacking intention, spend that time letting your mind stew in its own distracted and unhappy state, and you’ve missed the point entirely. Sure, you “meditated.” You sat still, breathed, maybe even followed the gentle guiding voice of an instructor telling you to let all tension go, breathe in peace, relax your mind. But this doesn’t mean a thing if you’re going in for the wrong reasons. The same is true of anything you do. Fitness, business, family time, vacation, eating a meal.

Intent is the name of the game, folks. Why are you here, wherever “here” is? And what emotions are your guiding forces? Resentment? Or appreciation? Apathy? Or attention? Resistance? Or embrace? Ego? Or humility?

Showing up is part of the process, but it’s only step one. The world has plenty of warm bodies that manage to “show up,” but we could use a few more that really live with intent.